


Deck the Halls with Boughs of Cactus

by Draco_sollicitus



Series: 25 Days of Star Wars [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Fluff, Hallmark Movie Plotline, Journalist!Poe, Mechanic!Rey, Modern AU, Poe's from the Big City, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 16:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21666115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: Poe Dameron cannot believe that Leia has sent him on assignment toJakku.Sure, she's friends with Lor San Tekka, the man who's single-handedly keeping Christmas traditions alive in the tiny desert town, but he can't imagine why she thought it appropriate to send her top reporter to a village in the middle of nowhere to cover a Christmas festival celebrating its 100th anniversary.Jakku is nice enough, for being as hot and remote as it is, but it's the town mechanic (who has a thousand and one reasons to hate the holidays) who really catches Poe's attention ... and maybe even his heart. This might just be the story of a lifetime.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Rey
Series: 25 Days of Star Wars [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1560265
Comments: 11
Kudos: 102





	Deck the Halls with Boughs of Cactus

**Author's Note:**

> WELCOME WELCOME WELCOME TO THE HALLMARK CHRISTMAS MOVIE THEMED FIC FOR 25 DAYS OF STAR WARS!!!!!
> 
> I hope you enjoy this first chapter!!!

“I’m going _ where _?”

Poe Dameron stared in shock at Leia Organa, who observed him over her laptop with a trademark stern glance. “Jakku, Dameron. Do I need to spell it out for you?”

“Maybe.” Poe dragged a hand through his hair, snagging on a curl or two; he winced at how Leia’s face shifted to a glare. “I don’t even know where that is, Leia.”

“It’s in Arizona.”

“Arizona,” Poe repeated. “Like. The desert, Arizona?”

“Like the desert, Arizona, although Arizona does have _ non _-desert places. They have forests, too.”

“Is Jakku a forest?” Poe asked dryly.

“No, it’s in the desert.” Leia hid a smirk very well at Poe’s groan. “I couldn’t very well send you to a jungle again! You only quit bitching about monkeys in _ April, _Poe. April.”

“That’s … fair.” He sighed and eyed his Outlook calendar. “Why am I going to … Jakku?”

“I have an old friend there, Lor San Tekka,” Leia explained, typing something quickly; she hit enter, and an email with contact info popped up in Poe’s app. “He’s helping the town celebrate the 100th anniversary of their Christmas Extravaganza.”

“Christmas Extravaganza?” Poe groaned. “That sounds beyond tacky. Like, Kes would love it level of tacky.”

“Mhm. And it’s exactly what we need.” Leia smiled pleasantly and twirled her pen. “Your articles this year have been terribly depressing, real downer stuff - we need some hope, Poe Dameron, and I want you to go out there and find it.”

“Leia, I won a _ Pulitzer _ with that depressing _ stuff _,” Poe spluttered. “I worked my ass off this year.”

“And now you can take a break from all of it, in sunny Jakku!”

“It’s sunny because it’s a _ desert, _ and I - my skin will _ not _like that-”

“Your skin will be fine.” Leia snapped her laptop shut and folded her hands on top of it. “Your flight leaves in three days, Dameron.”

Poe stared at her. “Leia, I haven’t even consented to _ going, _how do you know when my flight would leave?”

“Because only one flight a week goes to Jakku Airport. Very small airstrip.” Leia’s smile was pure evil. “You’re going to love it.”

* * *

The sun boiled off the tarmac when Poe walked off the dinky plane that had taken him out here from his layover in Denver.

Okay, so maybe he was exaggerating: it was 82 degrees in the Sonoran Desert that day, but after the freezing cold temps and early snowstorms of Boston, it was a _ lot _to trade in for … heat, heat, and more heat.

“This is not gonna go well,” Poe mumbled, grabbing his luggage from where it had been left at the foot of the stairs. He walked through the Jakku Local Airport - it took a terrifying two minutes to walk from the tarmac to the front entrance - and spotted a cheerful, handsome man waving at him.

“You must be Finn?” Poe asked, nearing Tekka’s right hand man, who’d been sent to pick him up. 

“Sure am.” Finn shook his hand vigorously. “Damn, am I glad to meet you. Your article last year on the Syrian refugee crisis made me legitimately cry.”

“Oh. Thanks, Finn.” Poe smiled genuinely, a little taken aback. Most people he knew didn’t bother to read his articles past the headline or twitter summary (except Kes, who either cut his articles out of the paper or printed them off the computer so he could hang them on the wall at the old house in Yavin). 

“I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but my stuff is a little small scale, nothing important,” Finn explained as they headed out the doors and towards the only car parked outside the airport doors. “I started when I worked at my last job - total soulless corporate crap - but when I was writing one day, I realized how awful my job was, and it inspired me to quit and start working for Lor. Haven’t looked back.”

“And you’re happier now?” Poe hefted his luggage into the open trunk of the sedan.

“Sure am. My wife thinks so, too.”

“Well then, that sounds pretty important.” Poe closed the trunk and smiled at Finn, who smiled back, a great smile, one of the best Poe had ever seen. “And if you enjoy writing, and do it often, then you’re a writer Finn.”

“Yeah? You think so?”

“I know so,” Poe said confidently. They climbed into the car, Finn still smiling widely, and they drove off down a highway that could most kindly be described as barren.

_ 75 Miles Until Next Rest Stop! _ Proclaimed one weather-beaten, sun-faded sign. _ Stop at Jakku! _

“Huh.” Poe frowned up at it. “How is...Jakku? You been there your whole life?”

“Nah. I actually sorta hate it …” Finn eyed Poe. “Off the record, of course. I love the people, love the town, but man I hate the freakin’ desert.”

“So why don’t you move?’

“I like my job.” Finn shrugged. “My best friend is from there, and she probably won’t leave. The town could go under at any minute though, so…” He trailed off.

“What do you mean, the town could go under?” Poe itched to dig for more information, his gut instinct kicking in, where he knew there was a bigger story. It was an inherent talent of his that made him a better journalist. “Off the record, for right now.”

“I mean, the town is struggling a lot, financially and otherwise. Lor doesn’t want to admit it, but Jakku … it’s near the only water source in seventy, eighty miles, right? And there’s this land developer … who I might have used to work for…” Finn waved his fingers slightly, lifting his hand from the wheel (not that it mattered, Poe thought, because there was literally _ nothing _ and _ no one _near them for miles), “Y’know. Interning. Anyway, he’s trying to buy up the land so he can turn it all into a stupid golf resort or some garbage. The whole thing stinks.”

“Ew.” Poe wrinkled his nose, his mind whirring. _ Had this been why Leia sent him out here? _

“Yeah. Ew.” Finn shrugged, and then switched to talking about football, clearly unhappy talking about the fate of Jakku for too long. 

* * *

Finn actually left the sedan with Poe when he dropped him off at a place called “Maz’s.” Poe eyed the structure dubiously, but tried his best not to compare it to his usual digs. The sedan was a loaner, Finn explained before jogging down the street, but, “I suggest walking as much as you can because gas is ridiculously expensive out here!”

Jakku was about as podunk as Poe had expected. There were maybe ten blocks total, with a place called Niima Outpost on the outskirts, maybe half a mile from what seemed to be the Jakku town limit. Apparently, Lor and his Christmas Extravaganza lived a ways beyond that, and Poe should be conserving his gas to drive out there.

Poe groaned and checked his watch, then the front door that proclaimed, “_ NO CHECK INS BEFORE TWO PM, UNLESS YOURE MY BOYFRIEND.” _

It was 11. Might as well drive out to Lor.

He got behind the wheel and backed the sedan up, driving two blocks before he got uncomfortable. His sweater was a bad choice, obviously, in his new climate, but Poe was too tired and grumpy to pull over and change into a t-shirt from his luggage. It was a _ nice _ sweater too, soft and cream colored and complementing his dark wash jeans nicely, and he even had great boots on. This was a “meet the main lead for your story” outfit. This was a _ killer _outfit.

He was really, really sweaty.

Ignoring Finn’s comments earlier on how old the car was, Poe decided to crank the AC. Within a minute, a weird clanking noise started up, and Poe groaned again. “No, no, no, no,” he muttered, pulling up to a stop near the curb (If it was actually a curb on the dinky little street), the engine making a hissing noise now. “Awww, man!”

Poe got out and sighed, eyeing the car dubiously. 

“You from here?” A gruff voice asked him. Poe looked up to see a guy in his fifties squinting at him, and he shook his head, grinning sheepishly.

“That obvious, huh?”

The guy spat into the dirt, and Poe tried not to make a face. “Need a mechanic.”

It wasn’t a question. To be fair, it didn’t have to be.

“Yep.” Poe let out a tense breath. “You wouldn’t happen to know where one was?”

“Maybe … fifty feet that way?” The guy jabbed his thumb up the road, and Poe followed the gesture, laughing at himself when he saw a sign for _ Plutt’s Parts and Auto _just about fifty feet away.

“Wow. Thanks, I uh-” the guy walked away before Poe finished. 

“Okay, I’m not gonna get murdered,” Poe told himself, getting in the car and putting it in neutral. The car rolled forward, still seeming _ deeply _unhappy with him. Poe wished desperately that he’d been able to take Beetle, his 80-pound pit bull, with him on this trip. Sure, Beetle was harmless and was more likely to lick you to death than anything else, but at least he looked tough, and it would mean Poe wouldn’t get murdered in the desert.

“You won’t get murdered,” Poe told himself, eyeing Plutt’s Parts and Auto warily as he neared it at a slow crawl. “Your car won’t blow up and you won’t get murdered.”

He pulled up at last out front, and he yanked on the emergency break before bouncing out. A small man wearing a tag that said _ Hi, my name is: Teedo _glanced at him from the booth.

“Car trouble?”

“Car trouble,” Poe confirmed. “Do you have a mechanic free right now?”

The guy frowned at him. “We have one mechanic, dude.”

“Yeah, uh, is he free?”

The guy laughed, but Poe wasn’t sure why it was funny. “Ray’s free. You can go on back and see _ him _.”

“Oooo-kay.” Poe could hear the clanging of metal from behind the small, dilapidated building that seemed to serve as the entire hub of Plutt’s Parts and Auto. “Thanks?”

The guy grunted, already going back to whatever show was on his phone. Poe shrugged and walked around to the back of the building, side-stepping the cluttered auto parts and various contraptions that seemed to have just been abandoned.

“What a junkyard,” Poe muttered under his breath. He could see a hood up on an old, rusty truck up ahead, and he headed towards it, hearing the unmistakable noise of a wrench being cranked. “Hey, uh, Ray?”

_ Crank, crank, crank. _

“I’m just passing through Jakku. I’m here to see Lor San Tekka?” Maybe Ray knew him, and it might get Poe out of here faster. “And he lent me a car, but it seems to be having a lot of trouble. Do you think you could look at it...todayish? Today would be great.”

_ Crank, crank, crank. _

Poe walked up another step, wondering if he needed to repeat himself, but then the trunk slammed shut, and he stumbled back slightly, eyes wide in the bright, overhead sun.

“Uh.”

Ray was not _ Ray, _ at least, not the _ Ray _\- balding, greasy-shirt-wearing, gone to seed - he was expecting. 

Ray was … beautiful. In a real, knock-the-wind-out-of-you kind of way. Wearing a sports bra and and a high-waisted pair of jeans that had seen better days, her hair pulled back from her lovely face, a streak of grease across her forehead, her skin fair but flushed from working, and visibly freckled on her shoulders.

“Lor gave you a lemon,” Ray snorted. “He’s funny like that.” Her voice was jarring, even more than her appearance. She had a gentle, lilting British accent, as out of place as its owner in that crappy, falling-down junkyard.

“Uh...yeah.” Poe blinked, his mouth drier than that accursed biome he was standing in. “Yeah, it, uh, I haven’t… met Lor. I need to. Meet him, that is. Gotta drive out.”

“Is it a Toyota?” Ray asked, tilting her head. Poe nodded and glanced down, seeing an abandoned Plutt’s Parts and Auto shirt on the ground; the nametag read _ Rey. _

Rey, not Ray. 

“A Toyota?” Poe repeated, needing to remember to stay in this conversation and not have the thousands of conversations he _ wanted _ to have with this woman (namely, _ why are you here and what’s keeping you here, and can I buy you dinner _)

“It’s a car brand,” Rey said slowly. “You can … usually tell by the little symbol?” She tapped on the Ford logo in front of the truck. “...Did Lor give you the Toyota? Because that thing needs to be rebuilt from the ground up; there’s no way I’m getting it to run again. I told him it would run for another month or two, if no one touched the AC.”

“...Uhhhh.”

“You touched the AC.” Rey put a grease-covered hand to her forehead and sighed; when she pulled her hand away, another streak was left, over her temple. “Great. Okay, so you need to see Lor, and I need to take my lunch break. I’ll drive you.”

“Wait, really?” Poe stumbled over his feet as Rey snagged something that looked like a staff and looped it over her shoulder, stalking past him quickly towards the main shack that served as the service building. “You’d do that?”

“Lor owes me money,” Rey said over her shoulder, not slowing down in the least. “Or at the very least, a damn sandwich. I’m only driving you there because I have to go there anyway.”

“That’s - that’d be great,” Poe smiled at her, and Rey snorted, grabbing a white tunic from a hook outside the building and tugging it over her head. It fell in billowing waves over her jeans, making her look effortlessly angelic, and Poe tried not to stare. “I’m Poe Dameron, by the way.”

“Rey,” she answered, nodding her head and pulling a set of keys from her pocket. “But I guess you knew that.” She jerked her head towards a car parked in a small employee lot, and didn’t wait for him to start walking before stomping over there herself.

“Rey,” Poe repeated, “Rey what?”

“Just Rey,” she snapped, nearing the car and wrenching the driver door open. 

“Alright.” Poe ducked in the passenger side, trying not to stare at her as she started the car. “Just Rey.”

A Christmas carol blasted from the speakers when she started the car, and Rey made a face, smacking the power button. 

“I liked that song,” Poe teased, but he immediately silenced at the glare she threw at him.

“No carols,” Rey said firmly, backing up and pulling out of the lot quickly. “We get enough of that around here.”

“I bet,” Poe grinned as they sped down the street. “I’m actually here to do a piece on Christmas in Jakku.”

“You’re a journalist.” Rey eyed him, her expression unreadable, but Poe chose to smile back.

“Sure am.”

“You’re _ the _journalist,” Rey said, eyes going back to the road. “The one Finn wouldn’t stop talking about.”

“I guess so.”

Rey sighed and shook her head. “I’ve lived here my whole life, and there aren’t many stories to tell about Jakku.”

“My editor seems to think otherwise.”

“I hope she’s right,” Rey’s shoulders seemed to slump. “At any rate, I’m sorry you had to come here. But I guess you’ll be able to leave when you’re done.”

“What do you mean, able to leave?” Poe tilted his head. “Anyone can leave anywhere. It’s just a matter of going.”

Rey laughed, the first time she had since they’d met, and Poe liked the sound, even if it was a little sad. 

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Rey shrugged, still smiling. “Just, you sound like someone who’s never had to leave anywhere.”

His hand went to his mother’s ring, throat tightening. “I wouldn’t be so sure,” he countered without much sting in it. Rey hadn’t meant it that way, he knew, and there was no way she could guess anything about his history. 

If she had anything to say to that, she kept it to herself, and they drove in silence for the rest of the way to Lor San Tekka’s. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading, xoxoxo


End file.
